


but i want the whole damn thing

by blackwood (transjon)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Melancholy, Season 3, canon typical suicide mission, vaguely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transjon/pseuds/blackwood
Summary: “I was thinking actually, um. Why don’t you come over to my place and I’ll cook something?”Tim looks at him carefully. The scruffy, angled curve of his jaw. Soft cheeks. Those marks from his glasses. The blush creeping down his neck. There’s a deep affection blooming in his chest, then, for a long, lingering, treacherous second. Dangerous. Lovely.“Oh, right now?”Martin shakes his head. His hair bounces all over the place. “No, I – tomorrow. Can you do tomorrow?” as if either of them has plans anymore. Like they have to check. Like either of them goes out or sees anyone aside from anyone working there, now.The shoe’s about to drop, probably. The last shoe. Tim says “yes.” He doesn’t regret the word.–or, about being prepared to die as an act of revenge and clumsy attempts at love in the face of what surely is going to be the end of the world.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker, background one sided martin blackwood/jonathan sims, briefly referenced tim stoker/sasha james
Comments: 32
Kudos: 83





	but i want the whole damn thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cyprinella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyprinella/gifts).



> _i want the catharsis of knowing something bad's about to happen_  
>  _but also knowing that i can't do anything about it_  
>  (from banks by lincoln)
> 
> title is from piece of your heart by mayday parade
> 
> ah! turns out my grasp of s3 is worse than i thought. i read the transcripts for this season like six times. it's not totally canon compliant. thats fine though.

Tim hasn’t been good at relationships for as long as he can remember.

Or rather, he hasn’t been good at - at meaningful relationships, anything longer than a week or two of fun, even if the fun was just emotional, never anything beyond surface level skimming. 

He doesn’t like looking into it too much. He knows why, he guesses. He doesn’t like knowing. He’d rather not.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about people or that he doesn’t want to connect with them, it’s just – right now everything feels so temporary. Fleeting. Like all of it might just end any day. In general, just, everything going. Disappearing. And now, especially, with everything that’s going on, this cursed workplace, Sasha (and he won’t think about her any more than that, he won’t think about how he’d touched her, or how she’d laughed at his jokes or his silly stories or pranks or whatever he’d wanted her to laugh at, without a fail, how he no longer even knows what her laughter _actually_ sounded like, how the knowledge is so much worse than just forgetting –) Jon, Elias, all of these fucking puppet strings making him claustrophobic and contained here –

Nothing feels like anything. No one feels like anything. 

But Martin. Martin is something, at least.

–

Jon isn’t a bad person, per se. He’s just a guy, really – he’s just as trapped as they are, he guesses. It’s just – he’s easy to hate. He’s culpable. He’s responsible. He’s at fault. He sits around in his office wringing his hands and sighing and berating the rest of them like they’re stupid and acts like they ought to feel sympathy for him, like they should all be flocking to him and playing along just because he’s spent ages talking down to them. Like someone’s died and made him king. Long live king Jonathan. 

And Martin –

Martin does flock to him. He throws himself at his feet. He has this weird thing of – of affection, weird unstuttering loyalty to him, Tim can tell, has had it since Jon started working here, something annoying and bordering on obsession, something unexplainable, something unnecessary and grating and horribly annoying. If Jon caught fire he wouldn’t even throw water on him. He’d just straight up lie down on top of him, put out the flames with his own body, knowing full well Jon wouldn’t even care. He’d be all burnt up and charred all over and Jon would stand up and walk off and not even look back. 

Or something. This metaphor is getting away from him. All this burning in his brain is externalizing itself a little too much. 

Tim used to entertain it, initially, even when he was mean to him, even when he was mean to _Martin_ , because Sasha thought he was funny and good deep down and maybe that was enough, Sasha was always good at telling whether someone was good or not, but now it’s just –

“He doesn’t care about you, Martin,” he says, one day. Martin doesn’t even turn to face him, but his hands are shaking slightly. Hopefully he won’t spill the hot tea all over himself again. Guess all these metaphors about burning for Jon aren’t all that inaccurate after all.

“Shut up,” he says, quietly. Not even angry. Just sad. Surely Tim should be backtracking, here, but it’s just. It feels like he should be speaking in truths, now. 

“Sorry.” 

And he is – he really is. He’s sorry that Jon doesn’t care. He’s sorry that Martin won’t give up. He’s sorry that Martin won’t believe him or that he won’t care about himself enough to stop setting himself up for failure like this. He’s sorry he keeps setting himself on fire to keep others warm. He’s sorry. He’s just always so sorry.

He doesn’t contradict himself, though. He’s right. They both know it. They stand there in a suffocating silence for a long minute, Martin still looking at the closed door of Jon’s office, Tim looking at Martin’s back.

“Want tea?” Martin offers eventually. He turns around stiffly, like he’s been standing there for years. Like all his joints have been locked up and moving them again is taking up all of his energy. He holds out the cup he was going to give to Jon. Offerings of second hand affection. He looks sheepish enough that Tim knows he knows how it comes across. Self aware even in this long lesson on pervasive tunnel vision. 

“Sure,” he says. 

It’s chai. Looks like they’re down to the fancy kinds, now, with everyone reluctant to break out the good stuff most of the year, as if there’s a special occasion they’re saving it for. Nobody wants to go to the shops though. Expensive stuff it is, then, and chai’s good by Tim. 

Martin always makes black tea, any black tea, when he takes anything to Jon. It’s funny, he thinks. Martin doesn’t even like black tea himself. Not even English breakfast, which is all Melanie seems to drink, going through the drawers and the cabinets in a feverish search for it whenever she strays into the kitchen. Or Basira and her Earl Grey of all things that she hoards at her desk by the boxful, shares only with Daisy and sometimes Melanie if she asks very nicely. She almost never does, not unless they’re out of literally every other kind. Understandable. 

Martin, though, almost always drinks herbal tea – fruity and uncaffeinated. Pomegranate. Raspberry. Vanilla and strawberry and peach. Jon seems to drink whatever you put in his hand as long as it’s hot, as long as he wants a drink in the first place. You’d think he’d bring the tea he likes himself to someone who doesn’t care about the specifics of what he puts in his mouth, really. Habit and all that. Sharing what you like with people you like, and all that. Curious, that. 

Tim drinks his chai in the hallway. Tim thinks about Martin. Martin walks out into the kitchen and Tim doesn’t follow him.

–

Jon keeps leaving and Martin keeps walking by his office like a lost puppy and Tim keeps giving him sideways glances. And then eventually Martin starts coming to him with tea or biscuits, or he’ll sit next to him in the break room, and Tim keeps making him ramen because otherwise Martin would just eat nothing but Jaffa cakes all day. 

“Oh,” he says every time, like he’s surprised, and then “thank you, Tim,” like no one’s ever done anything nicer to him. It squeezes like a vice around Tim’s heart to know that it’s probably true, that this might be the closest to genuine, earnest intimacy he’s had in a long time. 

He tries not to think about Jon. He tries not to be angry. Or, he doesn’t actually, and he’s not – he’s not unaware of how much he’s not trying, how he lets the anger embrace him, how it’s just so _good_ to just be _angry_ again. It’s safe. But around Martin he tries to at least pretend to try to suppress it. Martin gets so mad at him and even though it’s easy to be angry it’s not easy to be angry at Martin. 

So –

Martin brings him tea. Tim brings him instant ramen like it’s nutritionally any better than those biscuits he keeps eating. He could at least make him an egg to put in it, he guesses. He should make an egg, next time. Cut up some green onions. Make it all pretty. He could pick up the fancy kind, too, Shin or Mama or those Nissin bowls that look so nice. He should. Tomorrow he’s going to, or next week. He’s going to, he swears. Fancy ramen with real sesame oil and egg and green onions cut into little rounds with the kitchen shears they keep in the top drawer with the plastic cutlery and takeaway soy sauce packets. 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

–

Martin pulls what happened to Danny out of him. 

Elias tries to tell him to not get involved, but he couldn’t care less about what Elias wants him to do or not do, because suddenly he has something to live for again, even if it’s just for a short while longer.

–

“Can you stop?”

“Stop _what,_ exactly?”

Martin’s breathing heavily like he’d just ran a marathon. Like he’s a dog in humid wet heat, locked in a car. Tim feels like a concerned bystander debating between calling the cops and breaking the window himself, pulling the dog out by the scruff of its neck before it dies right in front of him.

He looks so angry. Like he’s seconds away from openly hissing, like a snake. Tim doesn’t break eye contact even though Martin’s obviously trying to make him do so. Tim wonders if he looks that angry too. He wonders if he cares. Something about all that anger seems to drown out all other emotions. 

“Trying to _solve_ things,” he settles on eventually. He feels like a broken record these days. 

Martin scoffs, as if this is the first time he’s brought forward this idea. Like it’s not what he’s been saying all along. “You want me to just sit here? You want me to _join you_ in just sitting here, waiting for the end of the world?”

“Yes,” Tim says. He’s not lying. “I do want that. It’s not going to work, okay? Nothing we do is going to help or change anything. Or maybe it is. I don’t care. We’re going to hurt them and destroy as many as we can, okay, and if it works it works and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. Leave it alone, please.”

Not that he expects Martin to. He’d sooner expect for the Earth to stop turning. Martin opens his mouth and then closes it again. Tim walks away before he can get his voice to work again.

–

Martin keeps handing him tea wordlessly. Tim keeps accepting it. Martin doesn’t stay to watch him drink it. Tim wishes he would. 

–

“You know it’s not just _Jon_ I worry about, right?”

Tim looks away. “Sure.”

Martin’s got his brows all furrowed and his lips in a straight line and there’s for sure a mean look in his eyes. Tim doesn’t want to see it. He could hold eye contact. He doesn’t want to. 

“Why does no one ever believe me about anything? I’m not here to just offer tea and biscuits and, I don’t know, be in the way or something, you know? I _care_ about you and I hate this. I hate that you’re doing this. I hate that you won’t even _listen to me_. It’s like everyone’s determined to leave me out as much as possible, like, it’s not just Jon that doesn’t like me, it’s all of you, it’s _you,_ , and I’m used to Jon not caring but, god, can’t you just pretend to care?”

“I care.” 

“Then _show it_ , Tim.”

He wonders when the last time he heard Martin that mad was., or if he’s ever heard him that mad. 

“Come here,” he says before he can stop himself. 

“What?”

Tim opens his arms wordlessly. Fuck it. Fuck all of it. 

“If you think you can deflect from this –”

“I don’t. Just, come here.”

Martin’s face twists slightly, but he takes a step forward anyway. “I’m serious. There’s so many things we could _try,_ at least –”

“Shut up,” Tim says with no bite in his voice. Martin presses his face against his chest. His nose gets squished. The edges of his glasses press into Tim’s chest through his shirt. Tim wraps his arms around him. 

It’s not – it’s not _not enough_. Just, nothing is truly enough anymore. This isn’t any less enough than anything else nice in the world. It’s just not _enough_ either. Nothing is. Martin, though –

At least he’s something. Warm and alive and present and solid and there. 

–

“Y’know,” Martin says, one night, the archives already quiet and still, Jon still gone and his office empty and dark and locked, “I think.”

He stops to think, then. Tim giggles without meaning to, and Martin turns to face him, a look of indignant amusement on his face. His glasses have left deep, red marks on the bridge of his nose where they’ve been pressing down all day. 

“I _think_ we should eat something that isn’t instant ramen.”

Tim sits up on the cot. “What, like, in general?”

“I was thinking actually, um. Why don’t you come over to my place and I’ll cook something?”

Tim looks at him carefully. The scruffy, angled curve of his jaw. Soft cheeks. Those marks from his glasses. The blush creeping down his neck. There’s a deep affection blooming in his chest, then, for a long, lingering, treacherous second. Dangerous. Lovely.

“Oh, right now?”

Martin shakes his head. His hair bounces all over the place. “No, I – tomorrow. Can you do tomorrow?” as if either of them has plans anymore. Like they have to check. Like either of them goes out or sees anyone aside from anyone working there, now.

The shoe’s about to drop, probably. The last shoe. Tim says “yes.” He doesn’t regret the word. 

–

Martin’s flat is small and filled with furniture that can only be described as dingy, but it’s clean and organized and cozy. 

“Tea?” Martin asks as soon as he’s through the door and wrestling off his shoes. 

Tim steps through the foyer into the living room. “No, that’s okay,” he says. 

It smells like food. In the kitchen Martin’s got a pot and a skillet on the stove. Pasta in the pot. Tomato sauce in the skillet. 

“Almost ready,” Martin says apologetically, “give me five minutes. You can go sit.”

“No, I can help – what needs to be done?”

Martin gives him a strange look. Not bad. Just weird. Like he wasn’t expecting it. A few seconds of calculating silence pass. 

“You can put together the salad,” he says eventually. “I already chopped what needs to be chopped. Just wash the lettuce and assemble, I guess.”

Tim gets to work. Rocket. That potted soft leafy lettuce he almost never buys because it’s so much more expensive than just iceberg or even romaine. Red onions. Cherry tomatoes. Cucumber. Feta cheese. 

Martin stands by the stove and stirs the spaghetti every so often with a wooden fork, expression unreadable. The tomato sauce simmers away. It smells so good and Tim suddenly realizes how badly he misses eating real food. He used to, at some point, even if it was mostly just takeaway eventually. Real food. Nutritious. Healthy, even – whole grain, lean proteins, healthy fats, all that. It’s only this year he’s devolved so badly. Pot ramen, and not even the expensive kind, takes the joy out of eating. Or maybe all the shit that’s been happening took the joy out of eating, and pot ramen just came naturally. 

He washes his hands and Martin points him towards the cabinet over the sink and Tim sets the table. Martin comes after him a few minutes later, two wine glasses in hand, and something suddenly clicks in Tim’s head.

“Is this a date?”

Martin blushes all the way to his ears. “I don’t know. Is it?”

Tim’s face splits into a grin. “Maybe. Do you want it to be?”

Martin escapes back into the kitchen at a speed that is frankly impressive. Over the sound of tossing spaghetti in red sauce he says “if you want it to be.”

Tim plucks a cherry tomato out of the salad with his fingers. “Yes, Martin. I would like for this to be a date.”

Martin emerges with the skillet. “Okay,” he says. He seems out of breath. “Sure, then. This is a date. Also, don’t put your hands in the food. Who taught you manners?”

“Nobody,” Tim says, and bites down on the tomato. Martin smiles at him, then, almost like he’s reluctant to. Almost like he’s annoyed by it. Tim smiles back. 

–

And then it’s this endless anger and this desperate yearning that hits almost like a physical thing, these punches of fist to his chest, this squeeze of a relentless hand around his shriveled up little heart. It’s almost like a visceral disgust. Anger and love and disgust are all similar, in some strange twisted way, and right now they blend together in ways that Tim doesn’t know how to even begin untangling. 

Tim doesn’t cry but Martin does. Tim is never mad at him for it but it feels so distant. He wishes he could be a better help. They lie on Martin’s otherwise untouched bed on top of the covers and Tim says all the right things and does all the right things and Martin pretends he isn’t crying, and Tim knows he is, and holds him close, and pretends he doesn’t know.

–

Sometimes Tim wonders what it could’ve been like. In a different world. In this world. What it could be like. Martin kisses like he’s angry and Tim wonders if he is, really, or if he just thinks Tim likes it like that. He does, kind of. It’s easier to not think about it too much, though. He tries to kiss Martin like he deserves – kind and gentle and lovely – but Martin won’t let him. 

Urgency. Anger. This constant heavy blanket of something claustrophobic engulfing them. Tim can feel it starting to touch the top of his head, and he knows it’s going to be only so long til Martin will too. 

“I hate this,” Martin says one day. 

“What?”

Martin gestures vaguely. “Everything.”

Tim pulls away slightly. His grip around Martin’s bare waist loosens lightly, and Martin makes an annoyed noise so he tightens them again, just a little. “This?” he asks, and squeezes Martin’s body with his arms.

“No,” Martin says, and he sounds so irritated. “I hate how you won’t let me help you. I hate how you won’t consider anything I say. I hate that I have to keep feeling like I’m enabling your suicide mission. I hate that I keep having to give you my blessing, even implicitly. I hate being complicit in this insane plan.”

“I’ve told you,” Tim starts, but Martin interrupts him. 

“I _know_. It doesn’t make it any better. It doesn’t make it any easier.” 

Tim’s quiet for a long time, then. Martin feels warm and tense. For a desperate, fleeting second he thinks of burrowing into his skin and staying there. Martin always knows how to deal with things. Martin always knows. 

“I don’t know if I’m going to die,” he lies. “We might all be fine.”

“Sure,” Martin says, like he doesn’t believe him. “Sure. Like you won’t run headfirst into any promise of dying.” 

Tim presses in closer again. Martin doesn’t move away, and Tim has never been more grateful for anything. 

–

They don’t say _I love you._

The line in the sand. The last shoe. Tim holds it in his hands and refuses to let it drop. 

Martin doesn’t ask. Martin looks away. He’s got his own shoes to hold onto.

Fair enough. Better keep some things private.

–

(In the tunnels Martin had gotten lost and Tim had been so afraid. Even high on CO2 and out of it, he’d been afraid. Or maybe the fear had come after they’d already made it out. Hard to tell. Retrospection has never been his strong suit.

Martin. Sweet Martin. Good and lovely and selfless. Alone. Vulnerable. Something violent and possessive opening up in his chest, threatening to swallow his heart. Something bottomless and endlessly deep. An entity in itself. Tim wonders, sometimes, what entity it’d be, this pit of wanting and yearning, this black hole within him. Martin and his gentle hands curling into white-knuckled fists when Tim explains himself until he’s blue in the face. Martin and his gentle hands alone in the tunnels. Tim wonders if he’ll miss Martin, in whatever world comes after, assuming there’s anything at all. Tim wonders if Martin will miss him, here, in this miserable dark world.

He wonders if he comes back wrong if Martin will still take him back. Will Martin be able to tell? Would he be able to tell them apart? Would he look at him and see the wrong hair and the wrong eyes and the wrong hands and kill whatever it was that stretched his skin around itself until it looked human enough to take his place? Would he cry with his knuckles clenched white? Would he cry with his eyes scrunched shut? Would he cry? Would he cry? Would he cry?)

–

(When Danny’d gone Tim hadn’t cried. Nothing left inside of him to make tears with. Maybe that’d been one of the things he’d taken with him.)

–

Who knows who’s real, anymore. 

Tim makes use of the tunnels. He comes in and he goes out. Martin catches him some days, when he wants to get caught. He misses him. Martin says he misses him too. These days are hazy and anger filled and red and he can feel the approaching end in his bones. 

It feels good. It feels real. It feels definitive.

–

Jon comes back. 

Tim wants to bash his head in. He doesn’t. For Martin, partially. Because he’s the other person he’s almost sure isn’t one of _them_ , partially.

–

And kissing Martin is always either desperate teeth smashing together in a way that doesn’t feel good at all, just hurts in the roots of his teeth and his gums, the violent smash of bone to bone, Martin’s hands at the base of his skull holding him close enough to hurt, something upset and angry and bursting at the seams and making its way out through his mouth, the head of it just barely skimming the backs of Tim’s teeth or the roof of his mouth, trying to make its way down his throat, or it’s gentle and sweet and usually when it is sweet Martin cries a little bit and Tim pretends he doesn’t notice because if he brings it up Martin just pulls away and asks him to leave. 

It’d taken so long for him to let Tim kiss him sweetly at all. Tim gets it, a little bit. Being vulnerable is exhausting. 

These red, hazy days. Blood in their mouths. It doesn’t feel good or poetic or satisfying or dramatic. Just hurts. Just tastes metallic and painful and horrible. Sometimes Martin scrapes his tongue on Tim’s teeth on purpose just to make himself bleed. Tim wants to put the blood back. He traces over the arteries in Martin’s wrists with a single calloused fingertip and wishes the blood back into them. In his dreams touching him makes affection flood into him at the point of touch like through an IV. Martin shivers with his eyes closed and opens his mouth just a little bit. Sometimes blood trickles out in a slow thin stream. Usually it doesn’t. Tim always looks out for it anyway. 

– 

It’s so easy to pretend that lying is just for the best. It’s so easy to pretend. 

Eventually Martin finds out, of course, but everything before then is easy, when it is, at least. They sit in the break room and sometimes they’ll go to Martin’s flat and they kiss and it’s –

–

They tell him he’s going to stay behind. Martin doesn’t take it well. 

“It’s for the best,” Tim tries to say. “You need to stay safe. I need you to stay safe.” 

“I hate you,” Martin says with no hesitation and walks out of the room. 

Tim’s heard him speak in that tone before but never to him. It shouldn’t hurt as bad as it does. It does anyway. 

–

Martin finds him later. He’s got a cup of tea in his hands, and his steps are tentative, slow. If he was a cat he’d be walking low to the ground with his ears back, tail brushing the ground, tip flicking side to side nervously. 

“I get it,” he says softly. “Or I don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

Tim makes a noise. “Why?”

Martin pokes at the mug with a fingernail. “I don’t want to spend the time we have left fighting.”

It awakens something inside of him, suddenly. A deep desire to not die. A deep desire to stay here, with Martin. To pretend that everything is fine, that there’s a future, that he can live, still, like this, to exist and move on and heal. 

It passes. It always does. 

Martin takes his hand like he knows what he’s thinking, and there’s a look of deep sorrow in his eyes. 

“I didn’t say I’ll die, for sure,” Tim says softly. 

“I know,” Martin says. He smiles, then, but it’s a sad, ugly smile. Tim wishes he hadn’t smiled at all.

–

“We don’t really know each other,” Martin says. “I get that.”

Tim makes a noncommittal noise. It’s probably true. He’s been trying not to think about it too much. It’s a dangerous thought to linger too long on. He’s already scared. He’s already pushing away thoughts of replacements. He’s clinging onto the little things he knows about Martin. He has a little notebook full of facts, now – the color of his eyes. Little sketches of his face. He checks it twice a day. He always looks the same. 

“That’s not why,” Tim says. He wants to say they know each other plenty enough. It feels too presumptuous to say out loud. 

“Right,” Martin says, unconvinced. “I just mean – if we knew each other better maybe I’d have something I could say or do.”

Tim rolls over to face him. He could press their noses together if he wanted to. 

“Right,” Tim says, although he doesn’t agree. He wishes Martin would give up. Martin never does.

–

Time passes at the same speed it always does.

Tim gives Martin one of his sweaters. Martin takes it wordlessly. Tim doesn’t say anything either. It feels right, this quiet, solemn exchange.

Time continues to pass. It almost feels like it should pass faster, or slower, or anything, in little jumps and skips, anything. It feels like Martin should back off, now.

And still time passes normally and Martin doesn’t back off. Facts of life. Something to be said about that, maybe.

–

Martin invites him over for dinner again. 

In the claustrophobic heat of his south-facing flat Martin’s got all the windows open as he cooks barefoot, shirtless, just in his apron and broad shorts. Tim lies on the cool living room floor and watches him. It’s August now. Last of the heat wave passing over them before the trees shed themselves of their burdens and get ready for winter. 

Martin doesn’t ask what he wants to eat. He’s making a stew. Too hot and hearty for this kind of weather, Tim thinks, but he doesn’t say anything. Red stew. Flaky beef. It’s been going for ages now, he knows, probably since noon at least. Tim’s stomach grumbles and complains and Martin walks around and over him, going between the kitchen and the cramped living room, cool feet brushing the tops of Tim’s knees every now and then. 

“Goulash,” Martin says half an hour later, bangs the ladle against the side of the pot a few times just so the bits of potato and pepper and meat stuck to it fall back into the pot. “It’s Hungarian.”

Tim drags himself up and onto the dining chair. “I thought you were Polish.”

Martin scoffs. “What, I’m only allowed to cook Polish food?”

Tim smiles helplessly. “No,” he says, “I suppose not.”

Martin brings back two bowls, and they dig in wordlessly. It’s hearty. Too hot. Martin ladles sour cream in his bowl with a huge spoon when Tim says this, wordless and smug, and it helps, and there’s this shot of hopeless adoration, deep and painful, and Tim almost wants to cry there, in that moment. 

They eat and they clean up and every few minutes Tim could swear he sees panic almost settle in Martin’s eyes but he pushes it away every time and Tim’s too scared to bring it up. He’s scared if he says it he’ll kick him out, and he’s desperate for this. One last shot at normalcy. One last day. 

–

They sleep together in Martin’s bed. Martin kisses him with his hands around Tim’s wrists, holding him there, like he’s scared he’s going to fade into nothing underneath him. Tim kisses back with the hunger and aggression of a dying man. Ironic, that. 

He leaves the next morning. Martin clings onto him for just a few seconds before letting go, still in his underwear and tank top, and Tim wants to kiss the top of his head, tell him it’s going to be okay. 

It’s the day before they’re leaving. The sun presses down on him heavy and insistent as he walks. Soon. Soon. Soon.

–

Tim leaves filled with anger and joy and destructive energy.

He’s going to destroy as many of them as he can. He’s going to destroy himself if it comes down to it, he is, and he’s been preparing to do it for ages now. He’s going to blow himself into little pieces and he’s going to finally be at peace again. It feels like a promise.

He makes eye contact with Martin through the window. It’s the last time. It might be the last time, at least. The thought almost feels too heavy to think up, let alone carry with him, but maybe it’s true. Maybe he’ll come back, after all. Maybe he’ll snap out of it and there, deep in the guts of that wax museum he’ll remember all the good and he’ll avenge Danny but he won’t die, maybe he’ll realize there’s more to life, maybe he’ll hold onto this snapshot of Martin’s bloodshot eyes, his face pressed against the break room window, looking at him with his mouth just barely open, mouthing something Tim can just barely make out. 

Stay safe. Love you. 

Tim looks away. Martin, in the window, becomes movement in the corner of his eye. He closes his eyes. He commits this moment into his memory. 

Anchor. Maybe it’s going to be enough.

–

(Warm summer morning. One week until D-day. Tim leaves the archives to buy food and get clothes from his flat. 

He swears when he comes back he’s finally going to make Martin that bowl of nice ramen. He’s going to bring a knife and a cutting board with him to work and he’s going to chop up green onions and he’s going to boil an egg and he’s going to make it pretty.

He owes Martin this, at least. One nice bowl of instant ramen before the end of the world.)

**Author's Note:**

> hi im on tumblr @ blqckwoods.tumblr.com!


End file.
